3 Energy Stock Stories Ready For Thursday Perusal

The cold war between Edison Mission Energy and its alienated partner Chevron Corp is intensifying, as Edison Mission now says that Chevron has only one reason to remove it from a gas arrangement that has brought in billions of dollars during the last three decades: “greed, pure and simple.” Chevron sued Edison Mission soon after its bankruptcy filing, so as to remove the partner from the profitable natural-gas deal, and now says that Edison Mission is employing bankruptcy law to ultimately divest its interest, and thus force an unwanted partner on Chevron, which the oil major finds “abhorrent.”

An association of energy firms including Exxon Mobil Corp,. warns that Nigeria risks losing $185 billion inside of 10 years due to higher taxes proposed by a new law that will deter investment in the country’s oil industry. Managing Director Mark Ward of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Nigerian division, said in Lagos Thursday that Nigerian oil output could slump by 25 percent from 2.4 million barrels a day, should the Petroleum Industry Bill be implemented. Ward said that the loss of investment caused by the law would leave it unable to handle decline rates at oilfields, as he represented the Oil Producers Trade Section at a conference in the commercial capital, observing that “The terms proposed increase royalties, increase taxes and lower allowances or incentives all at the same time.” He added that energy firms are “deeply concerned” as the new tax proposals will “create one of the world’s harshest fiscal regimes.”

On Thursday, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s office denied that the government was talking about higher domestic prices for gasoline and diesel fuel, after the country’s currency, the real, saw steep losses against the United States dollar this week. Presidential spokesman Thomas Traumann wrote the denial on the official presidential blog during increasing reports by local media outlets that the government is ready to raise fuel prices so as to help the state-run oil firm Petrobras, which is selling gasoline and diesel at an approximate 30-percent discount to international benchmark prices for the two fuels, with the government hesitant to allow higher prices for fear of igniting inflation. The subsidized fuel sales have led to severe losses at Petrobras, and brought fears that the company will be unable to conduct its plans to invest $237 billion through 2017.